Isabel pushed the small loaf pans, Erica estimated over two dozen of them, together at one end of the heavy long table, and picked up a stack of clean unbleached dishtowels to spread over them. “Don't touch these,” she ordered, without bothering to look at Erica or Des to establish whether they were listening. “The dough needs time to rise before it's baked. So just leave it alone.” She flipped the last towel over the final pans.

“They have enough to keep them busy, they don't have time for that anyway,” grumbled Felix, the perpetually scowling cook.

“Better to make rules clear so there's no question,” Isabel said. “I have other things to do, but I'll be back to check on the bread later, of course.”

One of the swinging doors between kitchen and main hall squeaked as she pushed it out of the way. The sound had been barely audible yesterday, but to Erica, at least, it seemed louder every time. At this point it resembled nails on a chalkboard, and she winced. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Des grit his teeth and his fists clench briefly as he rinsed another dish and set it in the rack. Felix, like Isabel, appeared oblivious to it.

Isabel being out of the kitchen was a relief. While Erica was at the far end of the long counter, diligently slicing carrots to go with the tomatoes she'd already done, Isabel's presence felt uncomfortably like trying to work with a hostile supervisor lurking nearby, with potentially horrific consequences. It had taken what felt like forever for Isabel to mix the bread dough and knead it by hand, as though the clock were ticking much more slowly than it actually was; the respite while she’d left the bread to prove the first time hadn’t felt like long enough. The absence of the medium at least made it a bit easier to breathe. She didn't think she really needed to talk to Des to be sure he felt the same way.

The door squeaked again, before she'd even finished the carrots.

Erica snuck a cautious look in that direction, her hands still busy. Now what?

She hadn't seen this particular employee before. He was perceptibly, though not dramatically, taller than Felix, who was distinctly below average height, but she was quite sure he weighed only half as much. The fleecy black track-pants and unzipped grey hoodie and the faded-red top underneath looked weirdly out of place in a setting in which the temperature was absolutely consistent, but maybe he just liked it. Or maybe it was the easiest to find that fit comfortably—she knew from experience how frustrating shopping was if your build was outside of a narrow 'normal' range. She wouldn't have been willing to lay bets for or against his ancestry being entirely white, considering the pinkish-brown tone of his skin, the short silver-highlighted dark hair with loose waves.

“How long 'til lunch?” he asked Felix.

“The same time it is every single fucking day,” Felix snapped, with an impatient gesture at the clock on the wall, a simple black and white analog dial that lacked any more personality than anything else Erica has yet seen. It currently read at shortly past eleven o'clock. Lunch yesterday had been at half past twelve.

“It's not like there are clocks in every room. But c'mon, I've been digging through some of the most dense books in the library all morning trying to track down a reference to a technique Nestor wants to try. Brains use a lot of energy. I need to get my power levels back up.”

“Go pick an apple.” Without the incessant sour expression, Felix would probably have been a reasonably attractive man, for anyone into stocky dirty-blondes with very pale skin.

“You want me to go all the way outside the walls just to get an apple? There must be something around a bit more substantial that I can have without waiting over an hour. I know you and Gord picked up cookies on your last trip.”

“What are you, eight years old?” Felix rolled his eyes and heaved a theatrical sigh. Erica wondered whether he even knew or cared just how dramatic he was being over a very small request. “Fine.” He stomped over to the walk-in pantry. The door being already open deprived him of the chance to slam it open. He had to settle for simply coming back out and tossing a package of chocolate chip cookies on the counter with enough force to add considerably to any crumbling. “Knock yourself out. I assume you'll want a drink too. Get it and get out of my kitchen. I'm working.” He stormed back to the counter and made a show of filling a large pot with water. Des stepped hastily back from the sink and the dishes he'd been working on—there just seemed to be a never-ending flow of soiled dishes. Des' current project was a considerable number of plastic storage containers with lids that Gord had dropped off in a basket late yesterday. Felix and Isabel had kept them busy on more immediate tasks and there hadn't been time to do them before. Erica had seen them get filled yesterday, but had no idea where they'd gone, or for that matter where their twins had disappeared to this morning. That looked like over a dozen meals, and they must be going somewhere to make the effort worth it. Maybe Theo had seen something on one of many trips out to the clothesline, or Alison and Zach outside, but they had no more way to give her answers than she did to ask the question.

The newcomer filled a glass with milk and took that and the cookies over to the enormous table, stepping over the nearest bench to sit down. While he waited for Felix to finish with the water, he opened the cookies, bit into one, and chewed it reflectively. “I don't get why he's got his panties in a bunch wanting that anyway. Sure, a way to do divination that'll work on fae would be handy, but wouldn't you think that if it actually worked, it wouldn't just be one single reference in one single book? Of course,” he added thoughtfully, “they're mostly paranoid bastards and it wouldn't be a shock for one to hide something that did work as a purely theoretical experiment with no follow-up to suggest that it failed.” With a shrug, he finished the last of his cookie.

Felix set the pot on the stove. “From everything I've heard, they usually prefer to work alone and keep other people out of what they're doing. They aren't the only ones.”

“Probably just as well. I doubt the world really needs wizard collaborations on any kind of large scale.”

“I assume you aren't including the last wizard-fae war.”

The newcomer shrugged again. “Yeah, obviously. I'd rather not get hammered back into the Neolithic again by that bunch of LSD-trip freaks. Humans would be a lot safer without them. We didn't claw our way up to the top of the food chain just to have them treat us, well, like we're all inferior or something. Food for some of them, fucktoys for the ones who get so desperate for kids they'll look for humans, whatever.”

Top of the food chain? Erica thought sardonically. Die and watch what eats you.

Felix glanced over his shoulder, away from the pasta he was measuring out. “So is all this research going to mean we can get rid of them eventually, then? Or we're just stuck holding them off?”

“There's too damned many of them and we can't find a way to get to their dimension. Maybe if we could get all the real wizards and dabblers and mediums and psychics to all cooperate, and we attacked all at the same time with some effective strategy, we could make a serious impact. But since ninety-nine percent of those are all obsessed with the whole stupid live-and-let-live thing we're screwed. And that's just the very small percentage of people who even know that fae exist. If we could get the whole human race to turn on them... well, we'd have less of a population problem afterwards for a while, can't do anti-fae protections for that many people, but we wouldn't ever have a problem again, y'know?”

“Sounds like it'd be worth it,” Felix said.

Erica doubted he had any plans to be in the front lines if that day ever came.

However, it struck her as highly unlikely that anyone could get the majority of all humans on the planet to agree on anything, up to and including the survival of life on Earth.

“Lloyd!” a male voice shouted from the front of the house. Erica started, and her knife slipped, cutting across the carrot at an erratic angle. While she inspected the damage, the swinging kitchen doors were shoved open hard enough for one of them to crack sharply into the wall. She looked up quickly. In the doorway to the laundry room, Theo froze, a basket of wet laundry braced on one aqua-clad hip, then backed up a couple of steps.

She was never going to forget him, despite the nondescript off-white shirt and drab beige trousers and the blandly khaki canvas vest that was all pockets, nearly blending with his short hair and short beard. That was the younger of the two men who had put the cuffs and collars on them, who had stood there and watched clinically while her body did frightening and confusing things that had left her in her current taller and more hourglass form. The ones that Isabel had said were wizards and responsible for Erica and her friends being here.

Every instinct wanted her to run from him, and she saw Des tensing up, weight shifting to the balls of his feet and yellow eyes scanning the immediate area. Not that there was anywhere to run to.

He did edge farther from the door and over closer to Erica, though. Erica slid one of the other cutting boards in his direction, and the knife on it, and the bowl of cucumbers that still needed to be cut up. With any luck, as long as they both looked busy, no one would bother complaining that Des wasn't at the sink.

The newcomer sat up straight, and Erica saw the muscles tighten up his spine and across his shoulders, though he didn't stand up. “Right here. What's up?”

“Where the hell is the Rossetti Bestiary?”

“In the library. Isabel gave it to me this morning. She thought it might have some info peripherally relevant to divination on fae.”

“You left the Rossetti Bestiary in the library. While you aren't in the room, and there are faelings underfoot.” The wizard crossed his arms, fingers drumming against his own biceps, and his brows drew downwards in a way that made Erica want even more to have somewhere else to be.

“I'm just taking a quick break. They don't know what it is, and even if the ones doing housework wandered in there, why would they look in books anyway? You don't think they've got bigger things to worry about?”

Erica figured that JC, given ten minutes with books, would walk away with immediately relevant, if superficial, information—she'd seen him do high-speed research for gaming.

“I don't care! I don't expect books that are left in my study and Nestor's for a reason, rather than down here in the library, to be left lying around. Use them if you must. Your research is, at moments, helpful and it saves us the tedium of searching. But those books should not be anywhere that they,” he gestured to Erica and Des, “can have access to them. I would rather not waste the time on looking for magical solutions that will either make them impossible to open for anyone with fae blood or cause them to revert immediately to their proper location as soon as they aren't being touched. Understood?”

“Understood.”

“Maybe you actually mean it this time. I have something specific I want to look up. It won't take me long. I'd like whatever you've managed to come up with, since it might be of some use to what Nestor and I are going to try out in the laboratory. I suppose I can get your notes for myself, but I have no intention of leaving that book down here un...” He glanced towards the swinging doors, but he was slower than Des, who had already paused in cutting the cucumbers to look.

That was the other wizard, the older one, who was all in grey clothes that looked like they'd seen better days—and could be better taken care of, because not only were there threadbare patches and fraying seams, everything was rumpled and probably not entirely clean.

“Aren't we going to the laboratory?” he asked, sounding more old and peevish than threatening or powerful. “Oh, cookies! That's thoughtful, a snack before we go try this experiment.”

“Yes, of course.” The younger wizard shifted gears so smoothly Erica figured he must be used to it. He strode over to the table to pick up the package of cookies, and offered it to the older wizard. “Low blood sugar means poor concentration and we don't want that.”

Rather than just taking a cookie or two, the older wizard took the entire package from him, took out one cookie, and bit into it. That grin might have looked more appropriate on a six-year-old.

“Perfect. Bring me a glass of milk when you come over to the laboratory, would you? And you'll hold lunch until we're done, of course.”

“It would be best to keep food out of the laboratory, don't you think? Crumbs or spilt drinks could be problematic. You taught me that.”

“Oh. Yes. Right. The library, then. You wanted to look something up. I'll go look for it. Bring my milk there.” The older wizard pushed through the door, making it squeak again, and left with cookie in his mouth and the rest of the package in his hand.

“Well?” the younger wizard said impatiently. “Milk?”

Grumbling under his breath, Felix filled a glass and held it out.

The younger wizard somehow avoided spilling it when he snatched it and stalked away.

Neither Felix nor the other, whose name was presumably Lloyd, moved at all for a moment.

Then Lloyd heaved a sigh, and muttered, “Oh, fuck Phrixos and his supreme wizardliness anyway. Pretentious much? Even Isabel just calls it the boom-room. And Nestor's half fucking senile.” He finished his milk in three gulps, and left the glass on the table. “So much for my snack. I'd better get back to the library.” The doors squeaked again as he pushed through them back to the hallway.

Erica took a deep breath, forcing herself to relax. She and her friends hadn't been the target. That was a relief. Their captors weren't exactly a united team. That was also potentially promising.

But that had still been frightening, and she hoped fervently that they weren't going to have regular encounters with the wizards. Isabel and Felix were bad enough.